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That morning cup of coffee won’t cause your heart to race after all

New study shows caffeine consumption is not tied to heart palpitations.

A newly released study contradicts what some have said about consumption of that morning cup of coffee, and that it won’t cause a disturbance in your heart rhythm and it may have cardiovascular benefits after all, according to an article on CBS News.

This could be good news for those lovers of coffee, chocolate and tea, but the research warns there still may be risks associates with heavy caffeine consumption and more research is needed to make that determination.

Dr. Gregory Marcus, senior author on the study, calls for a reconsideration of the clinical recommendations for the consumption of caffeinated products and their association with disturbances of the cardiac rhythm of the heart. He thinks those recommendations may be unnecessarily discouraging the consumption of those types of foods that may actually have some cardiovascular benefits.

Studies in the past have associated extra heartbeats with caffeine consumption, but those studies were completed years ago and new research is available.

This new study involved nearly 1,400 healthy people who wore a portable heart monitoring device for 24 hours, and their caffeine consumption was recorded during the test. The results revealed that 61 percent of the study participants consumed one or more foods like coffee, tea or chocolate, containing caffeine, and they did not experience any extra heartbeats.

In addition, the researchers found no differences in the number of extra heaertbeats per hour associated with the level of caffeine consumption. The study was conducted over a 12-month period.

Study lead author Shalini Dixit, a fourth-year medical student at UCSF, said in the release “This was the first community-based sample to look at the impact of caffeine on extra heartbeats, as previous studies looked at people with known [heart rhythm disorders],” according to the article. “Whether acute consumption of these caffeinated products affects extra heartbeats requires further study,” added Dixit.

The findings of the new study were published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.